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EXCEPTIONAL WORKS FROM THE TRITON COLLECTION FOUNDATION Christie’s is honoured to be offering for sale a significant group of works from the Triton Collection Foundation, which continues to evolve and grow in new areas. The collection spans a range of artistic movements from early Impressionism through to Post-War art, establishing the Foundation as a leading institution to carry out its many philanthropic aims. Over many years the Foundation has considered public access to its works as a fundamental pillar of its collecting ethos. A continuous dialogue with curators around the world and an extensive loan programme to over seventy museums globally has made this dream a reality and benefited exhibitions at the likes of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, the Seoul Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. These collaborations have ensured that an international audience has consistently had the opportunity to appreciate the quality and breadth of the collection, which stretches from classic Impressionism through to Surrealism and beyond to Post-War work by the major American artists. The sales of the major works in this season’s auctions will give the opportunity to the Foundation to continue its excellent, philanthropic work. The last major de-acquisition from the collection took place in our salerooms in Paris in March 2015 when the Exceptional Works on Paper from the Triton Collection Foundation sale elicited huge interest from collectors and public institutions around the globe: Those works, which had been collected by its founders over many years, saw spectacular prices for top quality pieces by artists such as Camille Pissarro and Fernand Léger, further to the numerous world record prices achieved for works on paper by Claude-Emile Schuffenecker, Paul-Elie Ranson and Frédéric Bazille. This strong market reaction is in recognition of the eye with which they had originally been selected. The group of works being sold across our Impressionist sales here in London includes seminal examples of French Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the European avant-garde, from Claude Monet’s luminous Vétheuil of 1879 to Jan Toorop’s resonating symbolist 1902 composition, Faith and Reward. Each of these works has been bought with a very discerning eye, and often the provenances of the pieces are as noble as the works themselves. We wish the Foundation great success with these sales as well as their future projects and continuous development of the Triton Collection Foundation. Jussi PylkkänenGlobal President, Christie’s

Yves Tanguy (1900-1955)

Sans titre (Taille de guêpe)

Details

Yves Tanguy (1900-1955)
Sans titre (Taille de guêpe)
signed and dated 'YVES TANGUY 45' (lower right)
gouache, brush and India ink on buff paper laid down on paper
22 x 11 3/8 in. (55.9 x 28.9 cm.)
Executed in 1945

Provenance

Pierre Matisse, New York, by whom acquired directly from the artist.
Pierre-Noël Matisse, by descent from the above; sale, Christie's, New York, 4 November 2010, lot 197.
Triton Collection Foundation, The Netherlands, by whom acquired at the above sale.

Literature

P. Matisse, Yves Tanguy, Un Recueil de ses oeuvres, New York, 1963, no. 356, p. 159 (illustrated).
J. Saucet & D. Marchesseau, Yves Tanguy, Paris, 1973 (illustrated n.p.).
P. Waldberg, Yves Tanguy, Brussels, 1977, p. 340 (illustrated p. 57).
K. Iwaya, 'Yves Tanguy, 1900-55', in Mizue, no. 927, Tokyo, Summer 1983, p. 30 (illustrated).
R. R. Hubert, Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Surrealism & Partnership, Lincoln & London, 1994, p. 192 (dated '1946').
S. van Heugten, Avant-gardes: 1870 to the present, The Collection of the Triton Foundation, Brussels, 2012, p. 565 (illustrated p. 325).

Exhibited

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Yves Tanguy, November 1946, no. 3.
New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Gouaches and Drawings by Yves Tanguy, March - April 1963, no. 17 (illustrated n.p.).
New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, First Showing of Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, December 1967 - January 1968, no. 64, n.p. (illustrated).
Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Yves Tanguy, Rétrospective 1925-1955, June - September 1982, no. 100, p. 140 (illustrated); this exhibition later travelled to Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, October 1982 - January 1983, no. 87, p. 256 (illustrated p. 208); and New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, January - February 1983, no. 100, p. 20.
California, Newport Harbor Art Museum, The Interpretive Link: Abstract Surrealism Into Abstract Expressionism, Works on Paper 1938-1948, July - September 1986, no. 135, p. 196 (illustrated p. 189); this exhibition later travelled to New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, November 1986 - January 1987; and Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, February - April 1987.
Rotterdam, Kunsthal, Avant-gardes: De collectie van de Triton Foundation, October 2012 - January 2013.

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Sale Room Notice

Please note the correct dimensions for this work are as below and not as stated in the printed catalogue:
22 x 11 3/8 in. (55.9 x 28.9 cm.)

Brought to you by

Laetitia Pot

lpot@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2052

Lot Essay

It is the present intention of the Yves Tanguy Committee to include this work in the revised catalogue raisonné, under preparation by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.

Sans titre (Taille de guêpe) ('Untitled (Narrow Waist)') is an exquisite gouache painting made by Yves Tanguy during his years in America. Painted in 1945, it belongs to the period in which Tanguy first moved, with his wife, the American artist Kay Sage, into a large house in Woodbury, Connecticut. Tanguy was advised in this move by the artist Alexander Calder, a fellow resident of Connecticut in nearby Roxbury and someone with whom Tanguy worked closely and saw often during the wartime period. Tanguy and Calder undoubtedly influenced one another at this time and, interestingly, Calder went on record as saying to Tanguy that he should ‘put more red in his painting’ (Calder, quoted in Tanguy/Calder. Between Surrealism and Abstraction, exh. cat., New York, 2010, p. 65). With its distinctive, narrow, spiky, stone-like forms, colourfully climbing against a what appears to be a cloudy sky, the strong vermillions and scarlets on display in this work appear to suggest that Tanguy took Calder at his word.

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